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Iraq
TRANSPORTATION
Transportation was one of the Iraqi economy's most active sectors
in the late 1980s; it was allocated a large share of the domestic
development budget because it was important to the government
for several reasons. Logistics became a crucial factor in Iraq's
conduct of the Iran-Iraq War. The government also recognized that
transportation bottlenecks limited industrial development more
than any other factor. Finally, the government believed that an
expanded transportation system played an important political role
by promoting regional integration and by heightening the central
government's presence in the more remote provinces. For these
reasons, the government embarked on an ambitious plan to upgrade
and to extend road, rail, air, and river transport simultaneously.
Iraq's main transportation axis ran roughly northwest to southeast
from Mosul via Kirkuk to Baghdad, and then south to Basra and
the Gulf. In the 1980s, efforts were underway to link Baghdad
more closely with the Euphrates River basin to the west .
Data as of May 1988
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